This year, 2019, marks a hundred years since World War I left Austria and other Central European countries devastated. Austria in particular suffered from the lack of food and fuel leading to widespread child malnutrition. 78% of all Austrian children under 15, and 92% of those in Vienna, were affected. The American Relief Administration provided on average 300,000 hot meals a day to school children over a period of several years. Over 200,000 children were sent to Switzerland, the Netherlands and Scandinavia to escape the famine in Austria. Yet these, as well as a multitude of other international aid efforts from this period, have almost completely disappeared from the collective Austrian consciousness, despite the fact that there are an estimated one million descendants of children who benefited from this relief program.

Historians and scholars from Stanford and Oxford, as well as from Austria and other Central European countries, will highlight these extraordinary multinational efforts over one and a half days.